


Lost and Found

by rillalicious



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, HP: Epilogue Compliant, M/M, Minor Character Death, Presumed Dead, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:33:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7673746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillalicious/pseuds/rillalicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione is an auditor for the Ministry. When she comes across an intriguing case with a familiar name, she turns to her favorite Auror for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thistle_verse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistle_verse/gifts).



> Thank you so much to my wonderfully adaptable beta, and to the mods for unending patience with me. Thistle_verse, I hope you enjoy this!

 

The little charmed lamp circled the hanging plant in a slow orbit, bathing it in the closest thing to sunlight that magic could create. The plant, with its long, spidery leaves, drifted just below the ceiling, swaying in a non-existent breeze courtesy of an easy charm, giving the illusion that this cramped space was just a little bigger, just a little brighter, than it actually was. Though she'd brought in the plant specifically to provide a bit of cheer and _life_ , Hermione barely seemed to take notice of it as she sat hunched over a column of numbers, a thick, wild lock of hair falling from her loose ponytail on each side of her face. 

Hermione's office—as much as it was an office and not just a glorified, windowless closet—was a small, u-shaped room with a cast-off old desk in the middle and floor-to-ceiling stacks of large plastic binders in neat columns lining three walls. The remaining wall was almost entirely doors: the center one leading to her office, the one on the left to her direct supervisor's reception area, and the one on the right, which had once led to the Aurors' bullpen, now directly opened into Harry Potter's office. It had taken some years of determination and tenacity to convince the powers that be to give her these two extra doors, but Hermione had not been deterred. And in the end, she'd turned down a corner office, lined with windows and plush couches, in order to keep her efficient little room. 

She looked up, craning her neck from side to side with owl-like flexibility, then pointed her wand at a binder in the middle of a stack against the right wall. The stack wriggled and bounced, then lifted itself in the middle and the binder flew out and onto her desk. The top of the stack collapsed back into place, coughing out dust and a few tiny spiders that twirled and swung their way down gossamer cords until they reached the ground and skittered away. Hermione didn't notice any of it. She was already buried in the contents of the binder. 

It was fascinating and complicated, the way this case was unfolding. Piles of ledgers crowded her desk, and she compared their contents with the multitude of possible monthly fees and penalties Gringotts regularly applied. There were matches. Exact matches. Dozens of them. And yet she hadn't been able to find a single instance of Gringotts collecting a fee from any of these vaults. She knew what this usually meant. Someone was laundering money. But in such small sums, she couldn't imagine what the point would be, especially given that the vaults' owners were wealthy beyond reason.

Hermione smiled to herself and tapped the end of her quill against the corner of her mouth. She loved a good challenge and this one had her absolutely tied up in knots. So much so that she was hardly paying attention when the small standing mirror on the corner of her desk began to vibrate. 

"Mum? Are you there?"

Hermione tugged her lower lip between her teeth and flipped through a few more pages. 

" _Mum_! I can see you!"

"Oh!" She dropped the quill and reached for the mirror, bringing it closer so she could adjust its surface. "Rose, I'm so sorry. Work has entirely swallowed me tonight. We were," a quick glance at her wristwatch and she sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth, "supposed to meet for dinner two hours ago. Oh, sweetheart. I'm sorry." 

"It's fine, Mum. Really," Rose said, but Hermione recognized that particular smile. It was the same one Ron gave her when she lost hours in a tower of books at home. "Lily stopped by and we did a little more planning for Grandmother Weasley's anniversary party. Well, _I_ did some planning. Lily flirted with the waiter and complained about how uncomfortable her ridiculous shoes were. But we have a menu!" 

"Oh, Rose, that's wonderful. Well done. And don't worry about Lily. She means well. She just has a hard time keeping her attention on one thing at a time." 

"I'll say," Rose said slyly. "Anyway, shall we reschedule for next week?"

"Yes!" Hermione said. "And I promise, I won't miss it this time." 

"Set your alarm, will you? Don't forget. I wish you'd carry a mobile like a normal person. You can keep your calendar in it and everything—"

"Rose, I do know how phones work," Hermione said, laughing. "I just don't have time for one more device. And you know your father. He gets so confused with Muggle things. He'd probably lock me out of it the first time he picked it up." 

"I suppose you have a point. I have to go now, Mum. But next Wednesday. 6 pm. The Floating Garden. Otherwise I'm letting Hugo plan the decorations." 

"I will definitely be there."

"Good," said Rose, shaking the bushy hair back from her face. It was a face that looked so much like a younger Hermione that it was startling at times to remember that she wasn't speaking to her own reflection. "Give my love to Uncle Harry. And try to get home at a decent hour. Both of you. They're going to build you bunk beds in the Ministry if you keep this up."

"I'll try my best. Goodnight, sweetheart." 

"Goodnight, Mum." 

Hermione sighed and flipped the mirror away from her. She'd almost forgotten about the anniversary party all together. She set down the quill and started gathering a few things from her desk. Rose knew her mother's habits well enough to understand that if there was a case keeping Hermione at the Ministry this late, it was the sort of thing that would involve Harry's department, and she'd been right. Hermione had enough evidence now. She knew something was afoot, and she needed the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to help her prove it. 

She walked over to Harry's door and rapped on it sharply, then opened it up and stepped through. If there was one guarantee around here, it was that the only person working later than Hermione Granger was Harry Potter. But while Hermione worked late out of devotion and necessity, Harry spent his long hours at the Ministry to avoid going home to an empty house. He'd done so ever since he and Ginny separated two years ago, when Lily left Hogwarts. 

Their separation had been amicable. That first year all three children were away at school, they'd realized they had nothing left to talk about. Their friendship still solid, they discovered that they enjoyed each other's company more when they spent significant time apart. Ginny had gone back to coaching Quidditch, and moved to Portree soon after Lily found a flat of her own. Harry had stayed in London, in the same house where he and Ginny had raised the kids, though Hermione and Ron encouraged him to move. Lately, he'd been talking about returning to Godric's Hollow, which Hermione saw as both progress and a worrisome sign that he was only headed further into the past. 

Now he sat at his desk, Auror robes still draped over his shoulders, a grey-brown scorch mark slicing the fabric above his right elbow. 

"Close call today?" she said. 

Harry looked up and smiled, pushing the parchment, which Hermione immediately recognized as an Incident Report, away. 

"What? Oh, that. Right. I wish it had been that exciting. Rookie Auror and a misfiring wand is all. Ron tore him a new one over that. You know how he gets with the new kids," he said.

"Mmm, yes. I do. He likes to show them just how important he thinks he is around here. I'm glad he was there to defend your honor, at any rate. How long ago did he go home?" 

Harry glanced at the clock on the wall. "About two hours ago?" he said. "He went to say goodbye but you weren't in your office. He thought you'd left for dinner with Rose already." 

She sighed. "I forgot. I know what you're going to say," she added, cutting him off before he could speak, "but you're a fine one to talk, Harry Potter. You're here more than I am. And this case is just baffling me. I think I've finally proven there's something illegal going on, but I don't know just what. That's why I came to see you. It's possibly a case of money laundering, though the amounts are so small that almost seems absurd. I was hoping you could make some sense of it."

Harry looked at the binders in her arms warily. He hated it when she brought him complicated financial matters. While she found them fascinating, Harry preferred crimes that could be solved with action, not arithmancy. She often wondered if this job had just been a way for Harry and Ron to relive their glory days indefinitely. Though even Hermione would admit that they were brilliant at it. Unfortunately for Harry, they were so brilliant at it that _most_ crime these days was of the fraud and embezzlement sort, which meant desk work and tedious attention to detail. 

"There's something else you should know about this one," she added. "The Gringotts vaults involved, and there are several, are all part of the same family fortune." 

She hesitated for just a moment. This was the only misgiving she had about involving Harry in this particularthe case. She didn't want to give him any more reason to spend every waking hour at the Ministry. And if there was one way to get Harry obsessed with something, it was to mention this name. 

"Harry, the vaults belong to the Malfoys." 

~~~

It was like a recurring dream, but it only struck when Harry was awake. And though most of it was an actual memory, Harry had long ago begun to forget where his own mind had filled in the small cracks with fiction. 

_They were standing in St Mungo's, under the bright white hallway lights, and Harry swore the scent of antiseptic stung his nostrils, though the magical hospital had never smelled like that. They had come with Neville, Harry and Ginny, because it was his parents' anniversary, and they didn't want him to be alone. This was before Neville worked up the courage to chat up Hannah, and in those days, Harry and Ginny had taken responsibility for him, looking after him in the way a parent or lover would. Even as they began to have children of their own, their vested interest in Neville remained. It spoke of the great flaw in their relationship--without something to nurture outside of themselves, their interest in one another held only thinly--more than of Neville's inability to navigate his own life._

_So when Neville needed time alone with his parents, they stood in the hallway together in companionable silence, and when Ginny had gone for a cup of tea, Harry took to wandering the hospital alone. It was there that he saw Draco, sitting in a lone chair in the hallway beside a closed door, staring unseeingly at the wall in front of him._

_At first Harry had thought to go back. The corner was only a few paces behind and he could easily slip away without being seen, but there was something about the slouch of Draco's shoulders, the air of despairing astonishment that seemed to haunt him, that made Harry keep walking. He came to a stop just before reaching the chair._

_"Are you alright?" he said, without greeting. They hadn't spoken since leaving Hogwarts five years prior. He glanced sideways at the door. The name **Malfoy** was written in neat script on a little sign. Harry knew Draco's wife had given birth not long after Ginny had Albus, and he wondered if it was the baby behind that door. Or the wife. She was a Greengrass, Harry remembered. Or had he been reminded of that later?_

_"Potter," Draco said, the name soft and bearing no bite._

_"Malfoy, is everything--"_

_"My father," Draco said, and he looked up, looked **through** Harry, as if he didn't care that Harry was there at all._

_"I'm so sorry," Harry said. Surprisingly, a small--very small--part of him wasn't lying._

_"Oh. He'll live," Draco said, shaking his head, as if loosening himself from the bonds of his reverie. "And I'm sure you're far from sorry. No one would be sorry at his passing."_

_"That's… probably not true," Harry said uncertainly._

_"He tried to kill you," said Draco._

_"So did you," said Harry._

_Draco's hand rose to his chest, though his face showed no sign of realizing this, and the crisscross of scars that hid beneath Draco's shirt were suddenly the loudest things in the hallway._

_"So did you," Draco said, his voice soft and heavy like slow spring rain._

_"I did," Harry said. "But I didn't know that's what it would do. You knew that, right? I couldn't have known."_

_Draco's eyes fell closed for a moment, and when he opened them again, that far away, glazed look was back._

_"It was a thousand years ago, Potter," he said. "Bygones and all that."_

_He stood then, in anticipation of the footsteps Harry heard a moment later, when two wizards and a witch, all carrying briefcases and sporting severe scowls, rounded the corner._

_"If you'll excuse me," said Draco, "my father's lawyers await."  
_

~~~

It wasn't that Harry missed Ginny so much, or the kids, though from the moment James announced he'd got a job as a cursebreaker in Norway, Harry had felt a small, building loneliness deep in his gut. It was more that the house itself served as a reflective surface, and every time Harry stepped into its silence, all he could see around him was the ghost of who he could have been, the life he never quite believed he deserved. He wondered sometimes if he had simply talked himself out of a happy life with Ginny because he'd never believed himself worthy of it.

There was something else, though. Something that kept him from falling too hard down that dark rabbit-hole of self doubt. It was a quiet longing, a tug at the back of his mind, always there, that told him there was something different waiting for him in this life. A thing that grew in a path parallel to his own, twisting and winding along the cobblestones of a future that he could grasp only if he figured out how to move sideways instead of always forward. And this was the crux of it all, the reason Harry spent so many long hours engulfed in his work. This was the feeling he never wanted to examine too closely. Some small part of him knew that if he did, he would feel a sharp sting of loss for things that would never be. And Harry had already spent too much of his life navigating loss.

On this particular night, he walked into the empty house followed by a floating trunk, filled to overflowing with files, notes, Gringotts statements, and old Ministry records on the Malfoys. He understood Hermione's reluctance to turn this case over to him, and he had assured her that he would maintain a professional objectivity, though they both knew that was probably a lie. 

He let the trunk fall beside the dining room table, hung his robes neatly on a hook by the door, and stepped over several piles of unopened post to pull out a chair. Harry kicked his shoes off under the table, pulled his wand from its holster, and set it in front of him. The top of the trunk popped open, notebooks and envelopes spilling over the sides. 

The measure of a man's legacy lay there before him, in messy, yellowing paperwork and scrolls that had been wound tightly for so long they would never again uncurl properly. He reached down to grab a thick, grey envelope and opened it. A stack of embossed certificates slid out onto the table. Harry sorted through them quickly. Birth and death records from the last four or five generations. There weren't many; Malfoys weren't fond of large broods, unsurprisingly. 

_Lucius Malfoy, b. 7 May 1954_. Harry started a new stack with that one. 

_Draco Malfoy, b. 5 June 1980_. He stared at the light blue parchment until he realized his hand was trembling, then set it on top of Lucius's. 

_Scorpius Malfoy, b. 10 January 2006_. It was the second to last certificate and he barely took a glance, setting it carelessly atop the small pile. 

Harry closed his eyes for a moment, wondering if when he opened them, this would all be any less strange. It wasn't. _Draco Malfoy, d. 12 August 2025_. 

The tea kettle in the kitchen began to whistle. Harry dropped the death record on top of Scorpius's birth certificate and pushed the stack aside. He could hear the cup clattering from the cupboard and the water begin to pour. It was a charm Hermione had cast on his kitchen, activated the moment he walked in the door in the evening. If he was going to live like a hermit, she'd said, he might as well at least have a proper cup of tea in the evening so the pretense that he was taking decent care of himself would hold. He waited a beat, then summoned the hot tea to the table.

He couldn't let himself get lost in this. It wasn't about unfinished business with the dead, it was about the affairs of the living. 

The tea was too hot to drink. 

Harry took a ledger from the trunk and opened it. Hermione had been kind enough to leave detailed notes in the margins so Harry didn't need to bother with the maths. He leaned over and dug through the chest to find a stack of _Daily Prophets_. The death certificate lay still on the table, so unquietly that he swore it was speaking to him. He refused to look. Even after the first article corroborated the date. 

Even after every notation on the ledger led back to one significant moment in time. 

And then he saw Hermione's quick scrawl in the margins: _1 Sept 2025, S. Malfoy's account status: frozen._

~~~

_Sometimes grief is an angry thing. When Harry thought of this truth, he saw Snape's face in his mind, narrowed eyes peering out over that great nose, lips pursed in constant distaste. He saw the same look on Lucius Malfoy's face at Draco's funeral._

_He and Ron had waited to approach the old man until the empty casket had been taken away._

_"I'm very sorry for your loss," Harry said, and though he'd been to a dozen funerals in his work attire, and spoken the words a dozen times before questioning witnesses, this time they were flavored with sincerity, in spite of the man to whom he was speaking._

_Lucius cleared his throat. "Of course you are. I suppose you'll want to speak with my grandson."_

_Harry nodded. "We've already arranged it."_

_Lucius stood in such a way that he appeared to be just dangling in the air in front of Harry, his shoulders slumped forward, head hung, as if the life had drained out of him and he only remained upright on puppet strings. When he raised his head to meet Harry's gaze, the motion was lifeless and eerie._

_"I regret to inform you that you'll have to be inconvenienced, Auror Potter, but you'll have to meet with him at the Manor. My wife felt that his father's funeral was no place to receive an interrogation, so she's taken him home to await his mother's arrival."_

_"You held the funeral without Astoria?" Ron said._

_"She had to travel far to get here," said Lucius. "It isn't as if she was Draco's wife any longer. There was no reason to wait."_

_"This isn't an interrogation," Harry said, ignoring the rest. Whatever the Malfoy's dysfunctional situation, it wasn't his business. Though he couldn't help making a note in the back of his mind to let James know that if he were to die, Ginny should definitely be invited to the funeral. "Scorpius has already given a statement. The death has been ruled an accident. We just need a little more information to close the case."_

_Lucius nodded. "Be that as it may, they're expecting you at the Manor. Not here. Narcissa has already taken him home."_

_"You're obstructing the investigation," said Ron._

_"I thought the investigation was over," Lucius said, his voice suddenly hard, the way Harry had remembered it._

_"It is," Harry said. "We need him to confirm his statement in order to close the case, that's all. We can meet him at the Manor."_

_"Never wanted to go back there again," Ron murmured as they walked away. "Should've made him come to us."_

_"Maybe," said Harry. And though the small lie he told himself was that he didn't want to antagonize a dangerous, grieving man, he knew there was more to it than that. He wanted to go back.  
_

~~~

Hermione pulled the hair sticks from her bun, letting her curls tumble around her face as she walked with near-silent steps into the en suite bath. Ron would have arrived home hours ago, and she wasn't quite prepared for the interrogation just yet. There would be questions about the case, about Harry's involvement, about all the extra hours she was putting in now. And then, in a manner reminiscent of Molly, he'd ask what she'd eaten and whether she'd seen the sun at all today. It would all be well-intentioned and considerate, but after long hours poring over ledgers and files, her patience was far too thin to deal with Ron's fussing.

She set the water to running and flicked her wand to bring up the floating blue flames that drifted over the tub. It was reasonable for Ron to worry, about both Hermione and Harry. He knew how poorly she cared for herself when she was truly obsessed with a good mystery, and Harry's preoccupation with this case bordered on something entirely unhealthy. She hoped it hadn't been a mistake to bring it to him. He never thought clearly when there was a Malfoy involved, especially not Draco. And since Draco's death it had been even worse.

When the water was high and steaming, she undressed and slowly stepped in, sinking down into the warmth with a soft moan, her hair spreading across the surface like a halo. She tried to imagine all thoughts of work melting into the water, though her brain seemed determined not to cooperate. It was just when she found herself wishing that she'd fixed herself a drink before her bath that the door opened. 

"Didn't know you were home," Ron said, stepping into the dim light. 

"Just got in," she said, reluctantly opening her eyes. 

Ron held up the glass of wine. "I heard the water running," he said, his smile bashfully crooked. 

"You're a saint," Hermione said, and she reached for it, indulging in a long sip before speaking again. "Thank you." 

Ron nodded. He stood there, watching her for a moment, and in that span of time she could hear all those questions she knew he was holding. But instead of asking any of them he swallowed, his Adams apple bobbing in his throat, and turned to leave. At the door he paused. 

"I know how much you hate it when I make a big deal out of your work. And I know this one is personal for both of you, but… Don't kill yourself over it, alright? Just… be careful. Malfoys aren't worth it." 

"Ron, I'm not--"

"Just think about it, okay? I'm going to Gringotts with Harry on Thursday to talk to some goblins. Take the afternoon off. Get lunch with Rosie. Do something that's not work for a change." He shrugged. "Or don't. Your choice. Enjoy your bath. I'll be in bed waiting up." 

She let him leave without another word, resting the back of her head on the edge of the tub and exhaling through pursed lips. Her Thursday afternoon was suddenly free, it seemed. Perhaps she'd make plans for an early dinner with Rose. After she arranged a meeting with Lucius Malfoy. 

Hermione sat up suddenly and took a long sip of her wine. That was it. She'd talk to Lucius herself. Until now, she'd only had statements he'd given the Aurors. But if _she_ were to ask the questions, maybe she'd find the right answers. Maybe Ron and Harry wouldn't even have to know. 

"Ronald Weasley, you're a genius," she said aloud, raising the glass to the closed door. 

From the bedroom came the muffled reply, "About time you figured that out!" 

~~~

Harry and Ron sat opposite the goblin as he shifted stacks of gold coins out of the way to peer at them from over his desk. 

"You were the investigating Aurors," he said, his voice tight with irritation. "Shouldn't you already know the answer to this?" 

"The case was closed in late August," Harry said. "You froze the account in September. We didn't know. Why was it frozen?" 

"This is personal information, and Mr Malfoy has not authorized me to share it with you."

"The Department of Magical Law Enforcement is authorizing you to do it now," said Ron. 

The goblin glared at him. "Your sort always thinks we're obliged to operate under your definition of the law," he said. 

"We're trying to find confirmation of illegal activity," said Harry. "The results will help Gringotts as much as they'll help us." 

"Doubtful," said the goblin. 

"Look," said Ron, "we can do this the hard way if you want, but I promise you that's going to take three solid weeks of unnecessary paperwork, seizure of several vaults, and will make doing business with Gringotts a bloody nightmare for your customers in that time. Or you can take five seconds and give us an answer and we'll pretend we were never here. It's up to you." 

"He's right," Harry said. "You know I have the authority to make all that happen. But I won't do it unless you want me to." 

The goblin watched Harry silently for a moment, a look of near amusement on his face. 

"I was expecting more from you based on your reputation, Harry Potter," said the goblin.

"Everyone always is," said Harry. "So can we come to an agreement on this?" 

The goblin made a small noise of discontent. "We were concerned when Mr Malfoy began giving away large sums on an almost daily basis. It was uncharacteristic behavior and the account was frozen until we could contact him."

"Large sums? Like a pay off?" Ron said, and Harry knew exactly where Ron's mind was going, because he was thinking it, too.

"No," said the goblin. "To charitable organizations. It was all done in his father's name. There was no reason for concern. Whatever you are trying to find, Aurors, there is no record of it at Gringotts." 

~~~

_The Malfoy family had rallied around Scorpius like a den of serpents, Harry thought. Narcissa paced the room regally, looking down her nose at Harry and Ron. Lucius shifted in his chair, his gaze cold and metallic as he rapped his fingers on the ornate wooden arm. Scorpius sat on the sofa, his shoulders hunched forward, wisps of blond hair covering his eyes._

_"This won't take long," Harry said._

_"I have time." Scorpius's voice was flat, void of emotion. "I don't do anything else."_

_It was hard for Harry to believe this was the same boy he'd met at eleven years-old, the boy whose anxiety and discomfort had been bubbling over in those early days. Somehow, Scorpius had become this smooth, unflappable playboy that sat in front of him, and though Harry had heard of the transformation through his children over the years, seeing it in person was different. Scorpius now possessed a confidence his father never had. Instead of bolstering it with arrogance, he seemed to genuinely not care what anyone thought._

_Draco, for all of his insufferability, had always been in search of approval._

_"Well, we do," said Ron. "So let's try to keep the answers short and sweet, yeah?"_

_Beneath the layer of fringe, Scorpius's lips curved up. "Of course, Auror Weasley."_

_"You've already given us a statement about what happened that day," said Harry, "but there are a few more questions we have to ask about the circumstances surrounding your father's… death."_

_He could feel Ron's eyes on him at the pause between the words, and he was acutely aware of his own hesitation to say it aloud. To acknowledge that Draco had died. He didn't even like thinking it. It wasn't right. They were all done dying out of turn. They'd finished with that more than twenty years ago._

_Scorpius's head tipped up, shoulders rolling back, and his hair parted around his eyes. "Let's have them," he said._

_Harry nodded. "When exactly did your father decide to take up sailing muggle boats?"_

_Scorpius sighed and reached for a silver case on the side table. He leisurely opened it and pulled out a cigarette. "Two years ago. He thought it would be a good… bonding experience for us."_

_"And was it?" asked Ron._

_Scorpius waited until the cigarette was lit and he'd taken a long, slow drag, to respond. Harry watched Narcissa's disapproving, silent gaze._

_"It was amusing enough."_

_"How often did you sail together?" asked Harry._

_"Most of the summer months," Scorpius said. "Like I said, he thought we could bond over it."_

_"Would you say your father was a competent sailor?"_

_"I would say he was good enough. It didn't happen because he fucked up."_

_"Right," said Ron tightly. "It was a freak storm. That he didn't see coming."_

_"Ron," said Harry._

_"That's exactly right," said Narcissa, her voice thin but lethal. It gave Harry a pang of guilt. Gone was the high strung concern she'd whispered in his ear so many years ago when she'd been so determined to save her son. Now she knew that Draco's fate had been sealed. "And my grandson has been through enough. If you'll both kindly see yourselves out."  
"Of course," said Harry, though he didn't feel half done with this. _

_"Give Albus my best," said Scorpius, a spiral of smoke twirling from the glowing tip of the cigarette. Then he glanced over at Ron and Harry swore he saw Scorpius wink. "And Rose."_

_Harry had his hand on Ron's back, relieved to see that Ron had apparently missed it. He shot Scorpius a curt, cordial nod, and guided Ron toward the door. Whatever he'd thought he'd find here, he hadn't found it. And Harry was left with the awful feeling that the thing he was looking for had gone down in the sea with Draco._

__

~~~

That Lucius Malfoy invited Hermione into his private library had certainly given her pause, but she was almost certain that he wouldn't do it with ill intent, knowing that she was there on official Ministry business and that an appointment of record had been made. Still, that hadn't stopped her from casting every anti-hex charm she knew, just to be safe.

He didn't get up from his desk when she entered the room. 

"Hello, Mr Malfoy," she said, frowning as the house-elf scrambled from the room. He was still clearly up to his old tricks. 

"Hello," he said slowly, almost poisonously, and he raised his gaze with such an intentional attempt at gravitas that she was hard pressed not to roll her eyes in response. 

"Hermione Granger-Weasley," she said. "In case you've forgotten."

"I've never forgotten." 

"I would hope not." 

"What are you here for, Mrs Granger-Weasley."

"It's _Ms_ , and I was hoping you would answer a few simple questions for me." 

He set his quill neatly on top of the parchment in front of him and leaned back in his chair, interlocking his fingers in front of him. 

"I haven't all day. Proceed." 

She cleared her throat. Did he really think all this posturing was going to dissuade her from questioning him? 

"I understand that this may be a difficult topic," she began, taking the seat opposite him in spite of not being invited, "but I want to speak with you about your accounts. Specifically, changes that have taken place in your accounts since Draco's death."

"I think you're confused," he said. " _I_ have no accounts. I haven't for almost twenty-five years." 

"I realize you signed control of them over to Draco, but these are still Malfoy family accounts, and I don't believe for a moment that you exhibit no control over them." She realized her voice was rising and she took a deep breath. "Let me try this another way. You are aware that I am here on behalf of the Ministry. We have uncovered a series of inconsistencies in your account movements and we cannot find a reasonable explanation for them. So I wanted to ask you to explain."

"Was my grandson unavailable?" His smile was slippery. 

"If we choose to speak with Scorpius, that will be a Ministry decision, and I cannot share that information with you at this time." 

"Spoken like a true bureaucrat," he said. "And here I thought you'd someday make something of yourself Ms Granger." 

"Granger- _Weasley_ ," she said curtly. "And you can save your commentary. I could not possibly care less about your opinion of me, Mr Malfoy. I am only concerned with my job, and the answers I need to acquire." She pulled out a scroll and passed it over the desk. "So perhaps we can continue this conversation as adults, and keep it short and painless. Unless you'd rather I hand it off to the Aurors. I will warn you that they tend to prefer words like 'interrogation' and 'incrimination' while I am here to simply gather a bit of information and be on my way."

For a moment, she was certain he'd managed to drop the temperature in the room with his glare. Then he reached over and took the scroll, pulling it toward him without taking his eyes off her. 

"Very well," he said smoothly. "Let's see what we have here." 

~~~

"And nearly a thousand galleons to the _Foundation for International Magical Student Travel_ ," Hermione said, and her eyes appeared in Harry's desk mirror. "The goblins were right, Harry. It was all charitable contributions. Every last sickle." She blew a whorl of hair from the bridge of her nose. "What exactly were you hoping to find?"

"A payment," Harry said, but he lowered his voice, because Ron was standing just outside the office and Harry didn't want him to hear. "For services rendered."

"What kind of services?" Hermione asked, and she began rooting through the paperwork again. 

Then she stopped abruptly.

"You mean like a paid killer," she said, and the shock and horror that Harry would even suggest such a thing was clear on her voice. 

"Shh," Harry hissed, and with a flick of his wand, he closed his office door. "Stay right there, I'm coming through."

In another minute, he was through the doorway connecting their offices. "I haven't even pitched this to Ron," he said. "It's just an idea that I have. But something isn't right about this. I know we explored the possibility back when it happened and decided he didn't do it, but who stood the most to gain, Hermione? Scorpius. He inherited everything."

Hermione let out a breath, soft and familiar, and Harry knew it was the sound she always made before she told him why he was so very wrong about something. This moment had become a well-rehearsed dance between them. 

"Harry." She had a way of wrapping words around him, like a warm blanket. It softened the blow. "There was an investigation. _Ron_ led it. You trust him. He found nothing." 

"I know. I signed off on it. And… I know this sounds crazy but... Maybe it wasn't murder."

Hermione blinked twice before answering. "That's exactly what I just told you." 

"No," Harry said. "That's not what I mean. You said that Lucius isn't happy with what Scorpius has done with the Foundation's money."

"No, he's not." 

"And that Draco never did those things."

"That's right. Harry, is this going somewhere?" 

"So why, if Draco was so close to Scorpius, did he run the Foundation so much more like his father would have?" 

"I don't know," Hermione said. "Some bizarre concept of loyalty?"

"No!" Harry said, a note of triumph in his voice. "Lucius still had a hand in what went on. When Lucius was ill and gave Draco power over the Foundation and all of the Malfoy trusts, it wasn't complete. He still had a voice in the future of the Malfoy fortune. But Draco's will left everything to Scorpius. Lucius was cut out completely." 

"Because he wasn't expecting Draco to die before he did," Hermione said. "So if there _has_ been a payoff… It wasn't to a killer." 

"And maybe the payoff wasn't coming from Scorpius at all."

"You mean it was coming from Draco," said Hermione, and her eyes flashed with a light that assured him he had something here. She knew it. "Or do you mean that it _is_ coming from Draco? Those small withdrawals, they've continued over the last five years."

"Exactly," said Harry. "He's not paying someone off at all. Draco's paying himself with that money. Wherever he is."

"So you think he faked his own death and went into hiding all over who controls the Malfoy money?" 

"I think it was bigger than that," said Harry. "I think this was about Draco's legacy." He thought about the look he'd seen in Draco's eyes that day in St Mungo's. "I think he didn't want to spend any more of his life doing Lucius's dirty work." 

Hermione's expression had changed. She was no longer watching Harry with an expression of intense curiosity. Her face had softened and a small smile pulled at her lips. She was amused. 

"You don't believe me," he said.

"No! It's not that. This is all so plausible. So logical. It makes sense, Harry. It's just… You're giving Draco Malfoy the benefit of the doubt. By a _very_ large berth. It's refreshing." 

"I'm glad you feel refreshed," said Harry, "because we have a long night ahead of us. If Draco _is_ alive, we need to figure out where he's been hiding."

~~~

The island was quiet enough in early Autumn, the sun still warm despite the breeze. Draco stretched his legs in front of him, toes digging into the cool sand, tall beach grass bending gracefully all around him as the cloudless coastal sky grew dark. Sun setting behind him, he reached for his drink, preferring to watch the blue fade to purple and then to the same murky indigo as the rolling Atlantic than the orange and magenta alighting the western panorama.

He reached out for his glass of wine, sleeve riding up his arm to reveal the pale blue dots inked onto his skin, curling up his forearm in a constellation he could trace with his eyes closed. The solitude had done him well over the years, and when the silence of it all had been too much, the stars embedded in his skin had been his anchor. Beneath them, the grayish scars faded to nothing, and he could hardly remember what he once had tried to be. 

The Malfoys had enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership with the wealthy American muggle family who owned the other, more visible half of this island. That it had been decades since any Malfoy had set foot on the premises only worked in Draco's favor, insuring his security here, so far away from any paper trail that might lead someone to his name. He could sail if he wanted to, and his fondness for the muggle pastime that had aided his escape had only grown in the past five years. 

It was the isolation that he imagined would be his undoing in the end. He didn't want to be around people, that much had not changed since his arrival. But without company, his thoughts had grown louder. Daydream fantasies and obsessions were no longer in check, and he'd let his mind run away to dangerous and ill-advised places on more than one occasion. So much time spent in only his own company had led to _longing_ , and anxiety swelled in Draco's chest when he thought about what it was he truly longed for. That didn't matter. What he left behind was what mattered, and he and Scorpius had seen to that.

He took his glass from the sand and rose to his feet. A walk along the shoreline always helped clear his mind, the rhythmic pounding of the ocean a study in meditation for him. On this particular night, the scent of the sea was heavy on the breeze, and he was almost lost to it when he heard the alarm. 

At first, he didn't find it worrying. From time to time, some member of the muggle family would bring a dog that darted through the wards after a rabbit or mouse. But tonight, something was different, the alarm more persistent, and Draco felt a shift in the air.

There was one way into the island for a wizard, and one way out. Both passages were hidden skillfully by both magical and muggle means, and even a seasoned tracker would be unlikely to uncover the opening. So it was with no small amount of shock that Draco found himself halfway down the path to the muggle beach house, standing almost toe to toe with Harry Potter. 

~~~

"I've got another one for you." Ron stood at the door between Hermione's office and Harry's, a thick file in his hand. 

She pushed her hair back with one hand as she looked up, still writing with the other. "I'll finish it after these. Just leave it in my inbox." 

Ron hesitated, then took a few steps into the room to drop the file on top of the already teetering pile. 

"You know how much trouble we'll be in if he gets caught, don't you?" he said. 

"And _you_ know perfectly well how much trouble _he'll_ be in if they find out he's gone off on his own." She stopped writing and set the quill aside. "We trust Harry, Ron. He's gone off to do a job--which he's extremely good at, might I add--and he'll be back once it's accomplished. In the meantime, we just need to make sure everything runs smoothly here until he's finished." 

"I know we trust Harry. I've always trusted Harry," said Ron. "It's Malfoy I don't trust. If he's willing to fake his own death, what's he going to be willing to do in order to keep it a secret?" 

"You really ought to stop watching all those muggle suspense films," she said. "You have no idea how much trouble it was for me to get information on these locations."

"About that," Ron said, and he pushed away a bunch of binders to make room on her desk for him to sit. "I thought I remembered you telling me that once you were done making that list, you'd start showing up at home at a decent hour."

"Did I make that promise?" she said, pressing a smile between her lips. 

"You did," Ron said, and he leaned one elbow on top of the inbox stack. "And I'm starting to wonder what a bloke has to do to get his wife to show up in time for dinner every now and then." He waggled his eyebrows. 

Hermione snickered and reached up to fuss with the top button of his shirt, flicking it open and running her fingertip along the hollow of his throat. 

"Well, when you're all spread out on my desk like this, it's hard to concentrate on dinner," she said, her voice low. "But I think that may be what you had in mind." 

"Are you accusing me of using my body to get your attention?" Ron said, smiling as he pressed his lips to hers. 

"Maybe," Hermione murmured into the kiss. 

"Mum? Mum, are you there?" 

Ron shot up faster than a snitch at the sound of Rose's voice, sending the inbox stack flying in all directions as he tumbled backward off the desk. Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth, helplessly caught between a shriek of surprise and a peal of laughter. 

"Mum? What was that? Are you alright?" 

Hermione flipped the magical mirror to face her as Ron crawled up onto his knees, his hand extending above the desktop with his thumb up. She giggled and shook her head. 

"Yes, Rose, I'm just fine, darling. What can I do for you?" 

"Dinner," Rose said. "I wanted to remind you early today. Before you got too absorbed in your work." 

Ron popped up on the other side of the desk, the haphazard pile of inbox folders in his arms. 

"Dinner, of course," Hermione said. "Absolutely. I didn't forget. We'll be there, Rose."

"Of course we will," Ron murmured. 

Rose smiled brilliantly into the mirror. "Fantastic. I'll see you at seven!" 

Ron fastened the top button of his shirt, his lower lip jutting out in a pout. "One of these days," he said, shooting Hermione a wink, "I'm going to get my wife all to myself." 

~~~

Harry hadn't known how it would feel to see Draco again. He'd tried to imagine it many times over the years. He had, of course, believed that Draco was dead, but it seemed that his mind would always wander to the impossible idea of catching sight of Draco in a passing crowd, or glimpsing a shock of recognizable blond hair in the window of a train whipping along the tracks. In his better moments, he imagined a chance to apologize, to do better than he had that day in St Mungo's when he watched Draco's fingers ride along the memory of the scars scattered across his chest. 

In the moment, standing here looking Draco in the eye, Harry had no such compunction. Something was swelling his chest, but it wasn't regret or apology. It was not aggression, either, which was an alternative he had also entertained. No, this feeling was far more familiar to Harry. He'd harnessed it nearly every time he and Ron had been charged with apprehending a criminal, and in those situations, he knew how to ride it hard and fast toward his goal. This was different. The adrenaline pumping in his veins had nowhere to go at the moment. Draco was not a dark wizard to be tackled and cuffed. 

Harry's heart thundered in his throat but he forced himself to stay still. The sight in front of him was absurd, really. Draco, barefoot in the sand, holding a glass of wine in one hand. He wore loose white linen trousers and a boat-necked shirt, dark blue or black--Harry couldn't quite tell in the dimming light--with striking white stripes cutting across it. This was not the Draco Malfoy Harry had known for all those years. His wind-tossed hair and the strips of sun-pink skin on his cheeks and nose looked as though they'd been hexed onto him for a laugh, and if his expression hadn't been so distinctly _Draco_ , Harry might have mistook him for someone else all together. 

"Did you come here to gawk, Potter?" Draco said smoothly. "Or was there something else you wanted? Considering all the trouble you must have gone to sussing out my location, I'm going to assume it's the latter." 

Harry cleared his throat, realizing that he wasn't quite prepared to speak. He had known he was coming here to find Draco, but he hadn't really believed he would. 

"Malfoy," he said finally. "You're looking well for a dead man. And you're right. I'm here for a reason. Though _I'm_ going to assume you already know why." 

Draco's smile was faint, and he raised the glass to his lips, sipping his wine for a moment before speaking. 

"Walk with me," he said, nodding toward the long wooden staircase that led to a small beach house. 

Harry felt the adrenaline crest inside him, the urge to dig his heels into the sand and insist that the conversation take place here and now was strong. He knew that Malfoys were always more confident on their own turf, and wasn't Harry out of his element enough right now? 

Still, he found himself unable to say no, and he caught Draco's pace in a few swift steps, taking the stairs side by side, the sound of ocean waves crashing on the sand behind them. 

"I knew if anyone would find me here, it would be you," Draco said, and a step later he stopped, turning to look at Harry. "Or was it Granger?" 

"It was me," Harry said, almost eagerly, and he bit the inside of his lip to keep himself from saying more. Whatever strange spell fell over this island, it seemed to embolden Draco's confidence whilst diminishing his own. 

"Of course," said Draco, and he continued up. 

That he spoke so casually, as if Harry were an old friend who'd just dropped by for a visit and a cup of tea, made this all feel as if Harry had stepped through a portal to some other universe. 

"So my questions," Harry said, reminding himself why they were here. 

"Dinner," said Draco, and he finished off the last of his wine.

"What?" Harry said. 

"Dinner first," said Draco. "I've been drinking all evening on an empty stomach, Potter. I'm not going to trust myself to give you a single bit of information about the Malfoy Foundation until I've sobered up a bit." 

"What makes you think I'm here about the Malfoy Foundation specifically?" Harry asked. 

"If you think for a moment, Potter, that I didn't know which clues would lead you here, you are sorely mistaken. Now, if you'll kindly save this conversation for later in the evening." They had reached the small bungalow by now and Draco pushed open the door, gesturing for Harry to proceed. 

"Please, Potter, have a seat. I'll have dinner on the table shortly." 

~~~

As Draco prepared the salad, he tried to pretend his hands weren't shaking. He tried to pretend the wine burbling on his empty stomach wasn't making him feel ill. He tried to pretend that he had _expected_ Harry Potter to be sitting in his little bungalow, waiting for Draco to bring dinner to the table. He sent the dishes to the table with magic, not trusting his hands to carry the china.

Then he took the salad bowl in one hand and a new bottle of wine to the table. When he returned to the kitchen for the glasses, he grabbed a second bottle for good measure. If Potter didn't drink it, Draco surely would. He decided to pour before facing Potter. And then he decided to drink. 

He'd drained the first glass and poured himself another when he realized this was absurd. Potter was here to ask a few questions and be on his way. Everything about the Foundation was in order. Potter would be satisfied with what Draco had to say and would probably leave the island and Draco would never hear from him again. 

Either that, or he'd take Draco into custody for the whole death fraud debacle. 

He set down the second glass of wine and drew a breath. Either way, Potter wasn't here for _him_ , he was here for the case, and it would do Draco well to remember that. This was why he hadn't wanted his mind to wander the way it did when he was all alone on the island. Draco realized now, with Potter sitting in his home, that he'd given in to his own longing. He'd done it only because it had seemed impossible at the time, but now that Potter was here, that longing, that _hope_ that this impossible thing could actually happen, felt sharp and dangerous, like the edge of a knife. 

Draco walked to the sitting room and gave Potter a cordial nod. That stupid hair of his was as wild as ever. Just as Draco had imagined it would be. 

"Dinner is on the table," he said. "Join me?" 

Potter rose to his feet and followed Draco to the table. There were only two place settings, but Draco waited until Potter had chosen one to sit down. He usually sat at a now empty chair at the head of the table, but that seemed a little too on the nose for a dinner like this. He wasn't Lucius. He didn't need pomp and formality in order to intimidate. 

In fact, he wasn't certain intimidation was the best tactic to employ this evening at all. 

The wide span of windows across the western wall of the beach house glowed in flickering orange light as if lit by a campfire, leaves of the white ash trees that lined the warded border on that side of the property flitting in the breeze and dappling the light. It lit Potter's face in such a way that the scar on his forehead appeared and disappeared like a ripple of light on the water. Draco served their food in silence, and was midway through a sip of wine when Potter finally spoke.

"You share this island with muggles," he said. "That's… surprising." 

"Is it?" Draco said, arching an eyebrow as he set his glass aside. "I thought you would have known I didn't entertain my father's prejudice. At least I don't anymore." 

"Your family's owned this property for a long time, Draco," Potter said, his fork piercing a piece of chicken in the salad. "So have the muggles." 

"It's amazing what money will buy, isn't it?" Draco said, unwilling to go into the exact details. Not that he was entirely clear on them himself. But he knew it had something to do with a great-great-uncle and a rather dark love hex that a prominent American muggle was desperate to purchase. "Even muggle money." 

Potter looked skeptical, but he took a bite of the salad instead of responding. Draco followed suit, then sipped his wine again. 

"The foundation has no connection to this island," Draco said. "So why don't we try to keep the conversation on topic?" 

"If that's what you want," Potter said, and Draco swore he could hear a taunt lurking between the words. "The money that's been removed from the Malfoy accounts, has it gone directly to you?" 

"Some of it," said Draco. "I may lead a simple life here by my family's standards, but a man still has needs." 

"Uh-huh." Potter raised the glass of wine to his lips and Draco tried not to notice the way the red stain lingered after he'd put it down. 

"What I haven't used," Draco continued, "has gone into an offshore savings account for Scorpius, in the unfortunate case that he ever need such a thing." 

He wished at that moment he could read the look on Potter's face, assess the thoughts that caused Potter's forehead to crease in a sharp V between his brows. 

"Right," said Potter, and he contemplated his salad for a moment. "So this has all been for Scorpius. Every bit of it. Even though you knew he'd be a suspect in your disappearance?" 

"In my _death_ ," Draco said. "And his memories were solid enough. We were confident in his story." 

Potter, still watching his plate, smiled faintly and shook his head. "He was so willing to share his memories. I should have known then, but… I thought he was just trying to save his own skin." 

"He was," Draco said. "That's what made it so believable." 

"Was it gillyweed?" Potter asked, finally looking up, "or something else?"

Draco laughed, for the first time since he could remember. It was a genuine and bitter sound. "You think I'd use your schoolboy trick for a matter this important? No, Potter, it wasn't gillyweed." 

"Then what did you use? How did you stay underwater for so long?"

"I didn't," Draco said, and he glanced over at the narrow table in the entryway. A small empty dish and a conch shell sat atop it.

He could feel Potter's gaze on him, and then on the table, and then the low chuckle coming from Potter's chest. He almost wanted to reach across the table and press his hand to Potter's shirt, just to feel that sound against the pulse in his own palm. 

"A portkey," said Potter. "You had a portkey under the water. How long had you even been planning this?" 

Draco's eyes met Potter's then, and he held contact for several long breaths before he answered. "Nineteen years," he said softly. 

"Scorpius's whole life." 

"You have a son the same age, Potter. What would you have been willing to sacrifice for him?" 

"Everything," Potter said, and it was without hesitation. 

Draco swallowed hard. He looked down at his arm, at the small constellation that moved as he did, that held him to this place like an anchor in the deep. 

"I'd like to be done with the questioning for tonight," he said. "You've come a long way. You can stay in my spare room if you wish. We can continue this conversation in the morning."

Potter took another bite of his salad. He was still chewing as he began to nod. "I can give you that," he said. "I don't know how much of your testimony will be admissible while you're intoxicated anyway." 

"I've been living here alone for five years, Potter," Draco said. "Do you know how many bottles of wine it takes to intoxicate me?" 

Potter smiled then, and Draco almost wished he hadn't, because it was a brilliant smile. "Unless you decide to be more forthcoming, Malfoy," he said, "I've got a feeling I just might find out." 

~~~

When Harry sent word that he was going to be _staying_ with Malfoy until he finished the investigation, Hermione thought he had to be joking. But two days had gone by and not a word had come on his progress. She rested her elbows on her desk, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. Sometimes that helped to relieve the headache a little bit. If this endeavor had gone wrong, Harry may have been, at this very moment, searching for a place to hide Malfoy's body. Or, worse, he was staying on in a secret location with Malfoy because it was where he _wanted_ to be. 

Either way, she was haunted by the thought that she may have put Harry's career and reputation on the line by handing him this case. Even Ron couldn't disagree with that. There had to be something she could do from this end, something that would keep Harry from getting in deeper than he was already. She was the one who'd started this, and she didn't want Harry to lose everything because of it. She scoured the list of numbers again, unsure of what she even looking for at this point. 

How could she possible get the answers before Harry as long as he was the one questioning Malfoy? And then, suddenly, the answer was laid bare in front of her. 

Draco hadn't done this alone. They knew that from the start. Yet it hadn't even occurred to her to speak with his accomplice, or to encourage Harry to take that route first. The spectre of Draco's living soul had been so consuming, that neither of them had considered questioning Scorpius again. Hermione rose to her feet. If she wanted to end this, that was exactly what she would do. 

Rose was reluctant to share that Lily knew Scorpius's address, and if the young Malfoy's reputation was even a shadow of the truth, Hermione could understand why. But after a bit of finagling and a promise not to tell Harry where she'd got the information (all the while keeping Harry's current location secret from Lily), Hermione had a street name and number, and she found herself smiling as she approached the all-muggle London neighborhood to find his flat. He clearly knew what it took to keep his grandfather off his doorstep. 

She wasn't surprised that Scorpius answered the door himself. She followed his thin, slinking frame into the flat, smiling to herself as he dropped down to the couch, flinging one leg over the arm and stretching out lazily.

"I suppose I don't need to point out that this is an informal questioning," she said. 

Scorpius shrugged and summoned a package of cigarettes from the table. She watched him light it with the tip of his wand, and take a careless drag. 

"I don't do formal," he said finally. 

_Don't hold Scorpius against himself,_ Rose had said, and Hermione was beginning to understand why. This charade of disaffected youth was wearing thin for her already. 

She sat rigidly in the chair across from him. "We know where your father is," she began. "We know what happened."

Scorpius's thin lips spread into a smile. "You think you do. What does the Ministry really know, anyway?"

"Not the Ministry," Hermione corrected, and for just a moment there was a flash of interest in his eyes. She tried not to feel smug. "Harry and I know. And depending on what your father tells him, we may be able to keep it that way."

Until the words had drifted from her lips, she hadn't even considered such a course. She knew, though, that Harry would. She had feared that Harry would promise Draco the moon if it meant he got whatever strange closure he seemed to need. But now that she sat here opposite Scorpius, and read the game he was playing, she knew that promise would bear weight.

"Oh?" He blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. "What are you expecting him to tell you?"

Hermione drew her wand and cast a charm to keep the smoke on Scorpius's side of the room, then demonstratively tucked it away. He gave her that tight-lipped smile again. 

"Where the money's gone," she said. "But you know all about that. The Malfoy Foundation and all the Malfoy Trusts are in your name." 

"My name," Scorpius said. "Not my control."

"Draco's control, then?" 

Scorpius shrugged. "Do I look like I care about my family name? He's the one invested in that nonsense. I have my private vault. I have my own life." He let his head drop back to the oversized pillows. "I told him this would never work."

"So it was Draco's plan all along. To take control away from Lucius."

"The old man was going senile before I was born," Scorpius said. 

"I wouldn't call him senile." If anything, Hermione had found Lucius Malfoy sharp as ever. Since her visit to him, he'd been regularly sending owl post, questioning every aspect of her investigation. She had to admit his scrutiny was getting harder to evade.

"He's completely obsessed with the way things used to be," said Scorpius. "He's a lunatic." 

"He's a dangerous man," said Hermione. "That's why Draco had to disappear completely, isn't it?"

Scorpius chuckled. "No. My father isn't afraid of my grandfather. He never has been. It was all in the legalities. He abandoned ship--pun intended--because his legacy was more important than our sailing time, apparently. It was the only way to get Lucius's hand out of the vaults."

"You miss him, don't you?" she said.

Again, Scorpius shrugged. "I have my mother." 

"Does she know about any of this? Is this why she…" 

"Walked out on him?" Scorpius turned onto his side, sprawled across the couch, and shook his head, stubbing out his cigarette on a silver snakehead ashtray. "No. She knew about my father's… orientation before they were married. Just like the Malfoy Foundation, I was just another transaction. The heir who would eventually turn the tables on the old man." 

Hermione frowned. "Your father… he loves you. You do know that, don't you? I've seen him with you, not often, but enough to know it's clear as day." 

"I'm sure he does. In his own way. But we're Malfoys, you know. It's a different kind of love than anything _you_ could imagine."

"How would you know what I can--"

"For seven years, Albus and Rose were my best mates. How do you think?" Scorpius sat up. "This is getting boring. Are we through yet?" 

"Yes," said Hermione. "I suppose we are." She felt a strange tugging in her heart, the urge to mother this child who seemed so wounded by the world beneath his apathetic exterior. 

Instead, she gave him a few words of gratitude and saw herself to the door. Outside, she paused on the sidewalk to jot down a few notes in her book, and write a quick letter to her daughter. 

_Rose,_

_Thank you (and Lily) for the address. I spoke with Scorpius. You and Albus should call on him. Just trust me on this._

_All my love,  
Mum_

Then she hurried off to the nearest owlry. 

~~~

The second day Harry stayed on the island, he woke to the sound of rolling ocean and cups clattering in the kitchen. The guest room was white and minimal, but possessed a gleaming perfection making clear that although Draco was far away from Malfoy Manor, he couldn't run away from his past entirely. Harry got out of bed and pulled the coverlet up neatly, knowing that even if he put effort into it, he'd never get it just right, and slid his feet into the guest slippers Draco had left for him. 

Of course there were guest slippers. On a secluded island where Draco had run away to live all alone. 

The absurdity of it made Harry smile a little bit, and when he reached the kitchen, Draco was just turning around. "What's that look?" he said. 

"Oh, nothing," said Harry. "This is nice, your place here. I just… It seems really hospitable for an Auror who's come to question you." 

"Would you rather I made you sleep in the boathouse?" Draco said, and he turned back to the counter, raising the glass carafe to pour two cups of coffee. 

"It wouldn't be the worst place I've ever slept," said Harry. There was a small bar on the opposite side of the counter and Harry walked around to take one of the stools there. 

"Of course it wouldn't be," Draco said, and he flicked his wand to send the coffee, along with a small pitcher of milk and the sugar bowl, to the center of the counter. Then he took up his own cup. "So, are you ready to finish the questioning?" 

"Give me a few," Harry said, stirring a spoonful of sugar into his cup. "You're not hungover, are you?" 

Draco looked indignant. "I don't do hungover, Potter," he said, and he took a sip of his coffee. "And even if I were, you do realize they make potions for that, don't you?" 

Harry inhaled over his coffee cup instead of answering, then raised it to his lips. Clearly Draco had all his faculties intact this morning. He gave the coffee a moment to begin working, then looked up at Draco again. There was no way for Harry to wrap words around the strangeness of sitting here with sea-scented air drifting through the window, sipping coffee across from Draco an ocean away from home, as if this were all just a regular morning. 

"If you're ready, we may as well begin," he said. 

Draco leaned his elbows on the counter, cradling the cup in the palms of his hands. "Then let's begin."

~~~

If Draco were to think of a Quidditch analogy for Potter's questions, he might have said that Potter was merely lobbing the bludger at him, seeming to know full well that it would plummet down to the pitch before it even came close to making contact. In fact, Draco found himself a bit disappointed with Potter's methodology. He'd known Potter's reputation as an Auror back when he was still in England, and he knew this was far from Potter's top work. He was beginning to realize that the idea of sparring with Potter was far more attractive than he'd ever given it credit. 

But somehow they'd made it to early evening and Draco had only answered questions about his expenditures and the trust he'd set up for Scorpius. When they'd finished dinner, and Potter had surprisingly offered to cast the washing up charms, Draco found himself unable to take any more of this. 

"We should walk," he said, leaning in the entryway to the kitchen with what he hoped was less nervousness than he felt. 

"What?" Potter looked up from the sink. 

"Walk. Out of the house," said Draco. "I'm getting claustrophobic in here. I haven't shared my space with another person in over five years." 

Potter dried his hands. "Wouldn't you rather walk alone then?" 

"You can't ask me questions if you're not there," said Draco, and this all felt like a ridiculous farce. Draco didn't actually want to take a walk and Potter didn't actually want to interview him, and whatever strange thing was happening here between them, they were just going to carry on like this without naming it because it was somehow easier that way. 

Cowards, Draco thought. Both of them. 

"Right," said Potter. "Well, we should get to it, then." 

Outside on the beach, the sound of the ocean and the wind eased Draco's tension. He pushed his hair back from his face and looked out at the endless water. After about a dozen steps, Potter finally spoke. 

"Why here?" he asked. 

"Is this an official question? Or a personal interrogation?" 

"It's not an interrogation. Just a question."

Draco nodded, and he tore his gaze away from the water to look at Potter. 

"I decided to learn how to sail, to teach Scorpius how, because my father had always hated the idea. It was petty and small at first, but… I learned to love it. Scorpius humored me. I like to think he enjoyed the time together, but," he looked away from Potter, "I can't say for certain. I know he didn't understand why I had to leave."

"But he still kept your secret for all these years," said Potter. "And you didn't answer my question, you know. Why here?" 

"I was getting there," Draco said, and he couldn't help a small smirk. "Still so impatient to get to the end of the story before it's even started, aren't you?"

"Some stories take a long time to get off the ground," Potter said.

~~~

_Harry shifted the cart of trunks and books aside on the platform as he watched the kids scatter in the direction of their friends. He'd told Ginny not to worry, and that he could handle it on his own while she oversaw the Quidditch trials for Holyhead. The children were old enough now to make sure they all had their necessary belongings, and they didn't particularly want to be seen with him, so he faded back into the brickwork as he watched Albus race across the platform to catch up with Scorpius._

_"They're inseparable, aren't they?"_

_Harry jumped at the sound of Draco's voice. "Uh, yeah. Scorpius is all Al talked about this summer."_

_Draco nodded. "It seemed Scorpius was sending a letter to Albus daily."_

_Harry felt as though Draco were appraising him, and he felt a slight flare of shame, knowing that he'd done the same from a distance in previous years, yet never had the guts to approach Draco first._

_"Seems like they got off to a better start than we ever did," Harry said._

_"If you'd accepted my offer of friendship in the first place…"_

_Harry looked up at Draco, half surprised by the possibility of a fight, only to find himself more shocked that Draco seemed to be smiling._

_"Yeah," he said, and he let out a little laugh. "Obviously it was all my fault."_

_"Clearly," Draco said. "So you're here all alone? Where's the Quidditch star wife?"_

_"Busy being a Quidditch star," said Harry. "So where's your…" And he realized he had no idea what Draco's wife did._

_Draco sniffed. "My wife? She's on holiday with her parents in France."_

_"Oh," Harry said, and for a moment he couldn't imagine Ginny intentionally missing this day._

_"Indefinitely."_

_"Oh." Harry didn't quite know what to say to that. "I'm… I'm really sorry."_

_"Don't be. It's better for her."_

_"What about you?" Harry didn't know why he'd asked it, but it seemed like the only thing to say next._

_"Potter, your concern is touching," Draco said, and he straightened up in a way that made clear he was about to leave. "But your assumption that this marriage was ever the thing I wanted is painfully inaccurate."_

_Harry watched Draco leave, and just like every encounter they'd ever had, he felt as though there were a puzzle between the unspoken words, and he didn't know if he'd ever put it together.  
_

~~~

Sleep always came readily to Draco on the island, and even with Potter as an uneasy yet welcome distraction, he found himself dozing off as soon as his head hit the pillow. His dreams, on the other hand, became something else altogether as soon as Harry Potter set foot on Draco's sanctuary. 

_Low tide left the glistening sand sparkling in the sun, and Draco's footprints left shallow pools behind them. Today, his attention was not on the white rolling waves in the distance, or the scattered shells. It was on the man in front of him. The soothing sound of the sea, the salty tang of it on the air, these things couldn't hold Draco's attention anymore. He only saw one thing there on the beach._

_Potter was leaning back, his elbows supporting him on the smooth shelf of a rocky outcropping. He was shirtless, and the small voice in Draco's mind that recognized this as not-quite-right, as too easy to be real, was quieted. Any other time, that realization might have been enough to wake him, but not here._

_Neither of them spoke, gazes locked to one another as Draco came to stop close enough to feel the heat from Potter's body. His breath came heavy like hard rain on the Atlantic. He closed his eyes, the tip of his tongue reaching out before his lips, tasting the ocean on Potter's mouth. It was a teasing, almost fragile touch, and when he pulled back again, Potter's eyes were luminous, green like the sea at midnight, and a thousand times as deep._

_Draco sank to his knees._

_The rigid outline of Potter's erection pressed through wet fabric and Draco rubbed his cheek against it. Had they been wading just moments ago? He couldn't remember. He had no context for any of this and he didn't care. It was happening as if it had happened every day before, as if they had been dropped into this moment without prelude or escalation. Draco looked up, hooking his fingers in the elastic at Potter's waist, sliding them down slowly._

_Potter's tongue trailed along his lips, leaving them glistening and parted. Draco swallowed, his own cock reacting sharply to every breath Potter took. It was the only thing he could really feel; the rest of the world, every touch against Potter's body, just a little bit out of focus. He didn't allow himself to dwell on that._

_Potter's cock bounced against his skin and Draco splayed fingers on Potter's hips, pushing him back against the rock, giving himself the space to dive in, to drag flattened tongue up the underside of Potter's erection. Potter shuddered in silence._

_Draco took the head of Potter's prick in his mouth, sucking, exploring with tongue and gentle teeth, coaxing a soft noise from Potter's throat, a thrill of triumph running through him when he heard it. There was the taste of ocean, of salty pre-come, of everything that felt too much like memory and too little like presence for Draco to stand. And then there was the feeling that he couldn't get quite enough, that something was missing here._

_He rose on his knees, bending his head, sliding all the way down until his throat went tight in protest and Potter braced hands in his hair. He moved with Potter's hips, slowly, the with increasing speed. The dance of tongue and lips and throat became erratic, and Potter's fingers curled loosely in his hair. Draco heard the symphony of tiny, wanting sounds, and only after long minutes of sucking and licking and swallowing did he realize they were coming from **him**. _

_Potter pulled up then, urging Draco to his feet, and Draco complied without thought. Their bodies pressed together, their fingers nearly interlocked as they rubbed against one another, the perfect, smooth curve of Potter's hard cock almost unnaturally good against Draco's. There were no words, only alternating breaths, and though he tried to find Potter's lips he couldn't, so he settled for throat and jaw and cheek, Potter's hand and cock sliding against his with the familiarity of his own body._

_When it became too much, when Draco knew he couldn't last another moment, he had to push back. Because he knew where he was suddenly, knew what this was all about. He watched Potter shake and come in front of him, felt the tide rushing in around them, wrenching him from Potter's body, and then it was all gone._

Draco woke up to the cool breeze chilling his sweat-covered body, a milky white stain on his bedsheets. He swallowed, his throat dry, and wondered if his cry had been aloud. He looked the clock: hours to go before sunrise. That was good. He needed to put as much distance between this dream and breakfast with Potter as possible. 

~~~

_Hermione,_

_I'm going to be a few more days at least. We're making progress here, but Malfoy's drawing it out. If it gets too difficult to cover for me, let me know. I have a few ideas for dealing with the Ministry._

_Thanks for everything!_

_Yours,  
Harry_

Hermione realized, after reading the letter over for the third time, that she was grinding her teeth as she stood on her front stoop, sifting through the post today's owls had left there. She had to steady herself for a moment to keep from writing him back and suggesting that he just get it over with and move in with Malfoy already. She was being reactive, and if she were completely honest with herself, a little bit jealous. Since Harry and Ginny had split, he'd relied on Hermione and Ron for almost everything, and it had helped her fill a little bit of that void that her grown children had left when they moved out. 

It wasn't that Hermione needed someone to mother--truthfully, Rose did more of the mothering these days as Hermione so often found herself completely absorbed in her work--but she had so much enjoyed being _useful_ to Harry. She wasn't naive enough to have missed all that happened between the lines when Harry spoke about Draco Malfoy, and she saw her time as Harry's caretaker coming to an end. Ron would laugh at her sentimentality, but she knew that deep down, he would feel it too. 

The next letter in the stack was, once again, from Lucius Malfoy, lamenting that she refused to set up another face to face meeting with him. He was trying to goad her, assuming she was afraid of him, and that was what kept her away. To the contrary, she'd been waiting for Harry to get home, knowing that if she didn't have his story in its entirety, she might give away information Lucius should not have. And after her audience with Scorpius, she felt the seeds of apprehension growing in her gut when she thought about Lucius's attentions. 

Hermione tucked both letters under her arm and pulled her wand to open the front door, pausing when she felt something off about the signature of the wards. She drew a silent breath, pressing herself against the brick beside the door for a moment before pushing it open. 

"Hello?" she called out, stepping inside with her right foot and waiting a few beats before her left foot followed. She held her wand cautiously in front of her. "If you're in here, show yourself!" 

Once a few seconds of silence greeted her, she crept into the house, sure to cast every exploratory charm she knew. The house was empty.

But when she reached her office, the door was open. Hermione cast another charm, her stomach tightening when the dusty shadow of a figure looming over her desk appeared and then vanished. He'd been here recently enough to leave a magical imprint. 

She turned on the light and walked over to the desk, quickly assessing her papers. Everything was still here. That wasn't what mattered, though. If he had left it all behind, maybe that meant he already got what he needed. It didn't take long before she knew what it was.

On the top of the stack was a notepad she had used outside Scorpius's flat the other day. The quickly scrawled notation _The plan was to wrest control from Lucius_ at the top. And suddenly she realized what she'd given away, and more dangerously, what she hadn't. If Lucius had broken into her office, she knew exactly what he had to be thinking right now. 

~~~ 

As much as Draco wanted to avoid saying it aloud, that Potter had stayed on for a week by now was comforting, even after the unsettling dream he'd had on the third night Potter was here. Living alone had been peaceful, and had given him the time to sort out so many things that had been weighing on him over the years, but the companionship had been welcome. And that it was Potter--that it was _Harry_ , as Draco allowed himself to say now--it was almost not quite real. He was beginning to feel like all this solitude and caused him to go mad, and now he was living in a reality that only existed in his imagination.

Though every day they managed to discuss whatever case or non-case Harry was building against the Malfoy Foundation, Draco didn't feel threatened. It wasn't just that if Harry had something, he would have taken it back to London by now. And it wasn't that Draco had spent years making sure that the plan involved no actual wrongdoing. It was that every afternoon the conversation meandered into something more casual, the topics both benign and somehow intensely intimate. 

He knew it was an emotional risk, his growing fondness for these long talks that lasted beyond the sunset, but Draco had lived too long with lies and manipulation to care about pretense any longer. Sometimes they would walk, or just sit on the beach with the sunset behind them. On occasion they would talk about their childhoods, their marriages, their children, but mostly it was just the little details that Draco held onto. That Harry often fell asleep with half a cup of cold tea at his bedside, that he almost never read for pleasure, that he used a muggle-style swivel chair in his office, these were all details Draco committed to memory. If Harry were to leave tomorrow, Draco would still know these things. And he could spend the next five years convincing himself that knowing these things meant nothing, that letting Harry infiltrate this secret life he'd built for himself had been a temporary distraction from the ever-rolling waves. 

"It's Scorpius," Harry said, and Draco paused where he was, reaching for his glass of wine in the sand, one arm outstretched. 

"Pardon?" 

"The tattoo on your arm." Harry nodded toward where Draco's sleeve had rolled up. "The constellation is Scorpius." 

Draco looked at his exposed arm, then his gaze slid to Harry.

"It is. I'm surprised you knew that." 

"I didn't," Harry said. "But I saw it the other day and…" His expression grew self-conscious.

"You wrote to Granger and asked her what it was."

"It didn't seem your style." 

"And the Dark Mark was?" Draco said. 

"Apparently not."

Draco stopped and faced Harry. "But you thought it was. Once." 

"Draco, we were teenagers. And you _did_ have it."

"There was no one there to stop me."

"You think I should have stopped you?" said Harry.

"Not everything is about you, Potter," said Draco, though there was a hint of a smile on his lips at the last word. "My son… reminds me that I can do better. So I carry that with me."

Potter didn't answer that, just looking at Draco instead, and Draco swore he'd moved closer without taking a step. The ocean was thundering now, Draco's heart beating a thousand times between the crash of each wave. 

"Why are you still here?" he asked, his voice so low that the wind seemed to take it away. 

"I don't know," Harry said, and there was an honesty in his eyes Draco had never seen in anyone before. "I keep trying to figure that out. Why haven't you told me to leave?"

This time it was Draco who moved closer. "I can answer that," he said, and he reminded himself that he was far too old for his hands to be shaking right now.

It was the singular hoot circling above their heads that signalled the owl's arrival, and like the tide pulling a child's castle back to the sea, Draco felt the moment retreating until they both had to look up.

"Granger's owl," Draco said as Harry unrolled the scroll. "Is she unlocking more secretive details of my life for you?" 

The silence that followed was foreboding. 

When Harry finally looked up, the softness was gone from his face, and he looked as he had that first moment he appeared on the island. 

"If your father thought Scorpius was responsible for your death," he said slowly, "what do you think he would do?"

Draco let out a sniff of laughter. "Have him killed," he said. And then he sobered. "Why would he think Scorpius killed me?"

 

"He broke into Hermione's office and may have read some of her notes. She thinks what he saw makes it look like Scorpius was responsible." 

Draco closed his eyes, the sound of the sea suddenly deafening. The pull he felt toward Harry had shifted, as if they were being drawn into a different direction together. 

"I suppose," he said finally, "it's time for me to return to London." 

~~~

The race to return to London seemed to leave Draco disoriented in a way that had nothing to do with the portkey the'd taken. Harry hadn't realized how deeply private Draco's past years had been until he saw the man standing on a street full of passersby, wavering on his feet as if he didn't know which way to turn. Harry put a hand on Draco's elbow and guided him to the building. Hermione had given him a heads up about the location of Scorpius's flat, and Harry wondered if Draco might have had an easier time navigating a neighborhood that wasn't teeming with muggles. When they reached the flat, however, he realized he'd get the chance. 

Scorpius wasn't there. 

"I… I don't know where else he could be," Draco said, walking to the window. "He sees a lot of people. He goes out so frequently--"

"I do," Harry interrupted. He held up a small ivory colored card for Draco to see. It was an invitation to dinner at Malfoy Manor. 

When they Apparated just outside the Manor, Harry realized that unfinished feeling he'd had five years ago when he came here to interview Scorpius might be resolved in an intensely unpleasant way if they were too late. The sun was already setting and dinner had to be long over. He tried hard not to imagine Lucius Malfoy disposing of his own grandson's body. 

Here, it seemed, Draco had found his footing, and he rushed into the Manor with long, sweeping steps, his island demeanor suddenly gone, as if he had lived here all along. 

"Father?" he called out, his voice hard and echoing. "Father!" 

Harry jogged down the hallway behind him, his wand in hand. Somewhere in a room ahead of them, something glass shattered on a hard, marble floor. 

"Father?" The answering voice wasn't Lucius, but Scorpius, and Harry choked back a little snort at the number of 'fathers' being paged. 

"Draco!" Lucius was right behind Scorpius in the dining room entrance. His face was ashen, which seemed appropriate, given that he was staring at his son's ghost. 

"Scorpius! You haven't eaten anything, have you? What have you had to drink?"

"Don't move, Lucius," Harry said, his wand extended. 

Lucius, who'd been about to take a step, straightened, arching an eyebrow at Harry. 

"I've only just arrived. We haven't eaten anything. Father, why are you here?" said Scorpius. "What's going on?"

"He was about to poison you," Draco said, taking Scorpius by the arm and pulling him away from Lucius. "Or do something else. Either way, he wanted you dead." 

"Grandfather?" Scorpius said, looking back at Lucius.

Lucius shrugged. "This is all speculation. There's no proof of anything and Auror Potter knows it."

"I have evidence that you broke into Hermione Granger's home and office," Harry said. "I don't need more than that to bring you in with me. And I'm sure once a team of Aurors combs through this place, we'll have plenty of proof that you were trying to kill Scorpius."

"Why would he want to kill me?" 

"He thought you killed me," said Draco. "When Granger and Harry started asking questions about the bank accounts, he got suspicious. No one would give him the details of the investigation, so he decided to go looking on his own. And what he put together pointed directly to you." 

Scorpius looked at Draco for a moment, then back at Lucius. He seemed not to know what to make of any of it so he leaned back against the wall and pulled a package of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his jacket. 

"I've told you not to smoke those things inside the Manor," said Lucius.

"Why?" Scorpius said, holding a cigarette to his lips. "Because they'll _kill_ me?" 

"I thought you'd killed my son," said Lucius. 

"Alright, Lucius, that's close enough to an admission," said Harry, walking closer now. "Hand over your wand and put your hands behind your back."

"Harry." Everyone went silent when Draco called Harry by his given name, even Scorpius seemed to stop breathing.

Harry looked down at Draco's hand on his arm, then at Draco. "I have to arrest him," he said.

"But only if Scorpius or I bring charges against him, yes?" 

"You're not seriously asking me to forget this whole thing happened and _not_ charge him, are you?"

"He's my father." 

"Scorpius is your _son_." 

Scorpius shrugged. "We're all Malfoys. No sense in sending the old man to prison." He smirked. "Again." 

"Watch your tone, child," Lucius snarled.

"Honestly, Father, are you trying to make me change my mind?" Draco sighed as if to make clear that he hadn't missed any of this in the least. 

Lucius scowled but didn't speak. Harry felt Draco's fingers tighten on his arm, and for a moment the contact was so distracting that he almost willed himself to believe they were alone in the room. 

"Harry."

Harry exhaled and lowered his wand arm. "I suggest you don't plan any trips in the near future," he said to Lucius. "Hermione still has a case against you if she wants to pursue it."

Lucius nearly smiled. "I'm sure _Ms_ Granger and I can come to an agreement." 

"We'll see about that," said Harry. And then, to Draco, "Are you sure about this?"

Draco nodded. "I'm sure. I'd… like some time with my son. Will you wait outside?" 

Harry looked over the lot of them, standing there as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all tonight, and though everything he knew about his job told him he had to stay here, something about Draco's request made it impossible to say no. 

"There had better be three of you still standing when this is over," he said, and he caught Draco's eye for a moment before turning away.

~~~

 

Draco found Harry sitting on a curved stone bench in the garden.

"I apologize for my family," he said. "They're rather complicated." 

"Yeah. A little bit." 

Harry shifted over and Draco took a seat behind him. 

"I'm going to catch hell for the report on this," Harry said.

"What are you going to say?" said Draco. 

"That all depends. Are you going back to the island?" 

Draco cocked his head. "You'd… cover for me?" 

"It would take a lot of time and resources to make a case against you. What would it be for? Because you wanted better for your son and your family name? It would be easier to say that you were lost at sea. Now you're found. And you didn't answer my question. Again. Are you staying on the island?" 

"I don't know," Draco said. Every time Harry sat this close, he was aware of nothing but the warmth of Harry's body beside him, and the thumping of his own heart. This time was no different. "It may be time for me to spend some time in London. Scorpius needs a father around. I think I left him too young. He's… different now. I'd worry." 

"Well, if you… If you need a place to stay for a while… I have room. My house is empty and huge. It's only me, so it's very quiet."

"I suppose you do owe me at least a week of housing after I shared my beach house," said Draco wryly.

"It would only be fair," said Harry.

Draco nodded. "I should probably collect my things from the island."

"I could come along to help," Harry offered. "To be sure you don't forget anything."

"It would be a pity if I left something behind." Draco swallowed. He wasn't sure when it had happened but Harry's hand had slid across the space of stone bench between them, and was laid over his own. Draco hooked his thumb over Harry's. 

Harry smiled. "I have a holiday coming up. If you can make due for a few days."

"I think that would be acceptable," Draco said. Harry's hand moved against his and Draco's breath caught. "In fact, I think it would be ideal."

 

{END}

**Author's Note:**

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